Legacy Solutions: The Most Timely Conversation for Parents & Newlyweds

By: Jon Hull / Author / Life & Legacy Documentation Expert / Speaker

In our last article we pointed to the, “Why” timely family conversations are so critical. Let’s start to pin point when these happen along with the actions needed to protect family and finances.

Having a son or daughter get married is such a joyous time and a lot of attention goes into making the wedding day go as smoothly as possible through planning. For parents, it is also a time to take the opportunity to talk with the happy couple about protecting their finances and family, after the honeymoon of course. Before they take off just let them know you would like to sit down with them and talk through some important family stuff when they return. Now you have set the stage in a non-awkward way.

This is the perfect opportunity for one of life’s timely conversations. It’s a moment to impart your wisdom of savvy financial decisions like buying health insurance, life insurance and having a simple Will created, just in case. Looking at life insurance, it is there to make sure that if something happens to one of them, the other does not incur catastrophic debt. How much coverage depends on how much debt they plan on accruing in the near future. If the couple is going to purchase a house, there needs to be enough insurance to pay it off. This is critical! We do not want our sons or daughters strapped with debt in this scenario. It is hard enough to have lost a spouse, and the impact of greater debt can make for a longer struggle with moving forward. Please paint those pictures clearly, with examples. Ask them to remember to have this conversation with their children in the future. This moves the conversation to future generations.

Remember, these conversations are how we move our family into “Having” their affairs in order as they go through life.

As we continue to write about these points in time for these conversations, you will see the pattern that many of these points in time are when a person’s legal status changes in some way. In this case, they were single and became married. The laws of the land now view them differently and they need to know this. There is nobody else to teach them and the conversations get lost, the generational chain is broken.

Next Monday we will visit protecting your 18 year old.

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